Astana finished the home series in the VTB United League with a convincing victory over the champion of Belarus Minsk — 77:48.
The capital club had already made a comfortable lead over the opponent in the first half, and the guests could not catch up with the Kazakhs. Thus, Astana won both games with the Belarusian club in the first stage of the regular season.
According to head coach Oleg Kiselev, the most significant victory of the season was won, among other things, thanks to the rebound win. Michael Myers grabbed 11 rebounds and retained the lead in this indicator in the entire League, continuing to share first place with CSKA's Nikola Milutinov (8.8 per game). Also, the American player scored 13 points, made an assist, and two interceptions.
Also worth highlighting are Rustam Murzagaliev (14 points), Daniil Aksenov (13 points, 7 rebounds), Markell Johnson (12 points, 6 assists), and Kwame Vaughn (12 points, 5 rebounds).
Now Astana and Minsk are equal in the historical statistics of the personal matches — each team has ten wins over the opponent.
«Congratulations to the opponents; they were very well prepared for today's match and played well both in defense and offense. The numbers speak for themselves: the effectiveness of our actions on the whole team was 33 against 104 for the opponent. On ten passes, we made 20 turnovers and missed a lot of free throws. Therefore, it's probably not worth counting on any positive result with such a game.» — Minsk head coach Rostislav Vergun said after the match.
A match against CSKA in Moscow is ahead of Astana. It will take place on January 14. And on the 17th and 18th, the team will return home to play with Aktobe in the National League.
Detailed information about the tournament, standings, schedule, and match results are published in the
Tournaments section.
